This proposal requests continued funding for the project, "Supports of the Elderly: Family/Friends/Professionals (NIA #AGO-1632-02). There are four primary objectives of the continued research: 1) To extend the work of the original proposal theoretically and empirically, through the model developed during the current project; 2) to extend the research on social support by testing the hypothesis that stress-buffering effects of social support are also characteristic of certain other socially-mediated variables such as predictability, understandability, and controllability of the social environment; 3) To conduct comaprative analyses of our national dataset with two complementary national studies -- Americans View Their Mental Health (1957 and 1976) and The Quality of American Life (1971 and 1978); 4) To work toward the goal of developing a program project representing the research interests in aging of the present invesigators (Kahn, Antonucci, and Depner) and integrating work in related areas. The principal analyses will focus on the testing and refinement of a theoretical model developed in the current funding period. The major hypotheses incorporated into the model describe physical and emotional well-being as the result of the direct and indirect effects of several factors (enduring properties of the individual, characteristics of the situation, requirements for and adequacy of social support and structural and functional attributes of the social support network). The empirical assessment of the proposed conceptual model with other national data-sets will extend our current work and substantially contribute to the scientific knowledge of social support in the elderly.